Melting

Stats

Health:

Passive:

Active:

Voice

B-Skin

Melting is a high risk/high reward character. Starting with only 2 health puts Melting in a disadvantage, but the right use of his ability to explode corpses and gaining the right combination of mutations can make him extremely deadly.

Contents

Melting has only 2 HP, but he gains more rads per kill. He receives one extra rad from each enemy. Enemies that usually don't drop radiation (I.D.P.D. troops, Small Green Rats, etc.) will drop one rad.

Melting causes enemy corpses and destroyed objects in the environment (damaged cacti, exploded barrels, etc) that are currently on the screen to explode, damaging any enemy and destroying any projectile caught in the blast. Unlike regular explosions, Melting's explosions don't destroy walls or props. As all Blood Explosions in the game, they do 4-12 damage. That's 4 damage per hit animation up to three times.

Corpses of larger enemies and larger destroyed objects cause his special to emit three explosions instead of one.

Detachment

Melting is a high risk/reward character, as he starts with only two HP. This means he can be killed in one hit by everything except a maggot, a single shotgun pellet, or the barest touch from a fire. In order to use his ability effectively, it is best to kill weaker enemies first and then explode their corpses on strong enemies. Killing either Giant Maggots or Maggot Nests with an explosive is a good way to spread lots of corpses around.

It is further worth noting that the Crown of Death doesn't affect Melting's explosive revenge.

Impact Wrists - allows you to fling corpses around the map, expanding the kill radius of Explosive Revenge.

Boiling Veins - makes you invulnerable to explosions and fire when you don't have rhino skin as Melting's HP is below 4. Even with Rhino Skin Melting will only lose 2HP if he is at max health which still keeps him at a good amount of HP.

Euphoria - gives you more time to destroy incoming projectiles with Explosive Revenge.

Hammerhead - helps with being overwhelmed in open areas by creating cover where there was none.

Plutonium Hunger - good for gathering all those extra rads Melting generates, and from a greater safe distance.

Long Arms - a deceptively useful mutation for Melting; it enhances melee capacity to kill enemies through walls and then detonate them, a strategy which can clear entire rooms without you even having to enter them.

Melting's much lower maximum HP, especially without Rhino Skin, diminishes the utility of a number of mutations which might otherwise be highly valued; these include:

Bloodlust - without Rhino Skin or Strong Spirit, Bloodlust is effectively useless with Melting. You're either at max HP, or you're dead.

Second Stomach - useless without Rhino Skin; it is immaterial for Melting whether the medkit restoring a single HP conveys two or four to any other character.

Last Wish - without Rhino Skin, the most HP Melting can restore by taking Last Wish is one.

Stress - the fire-rate buff provided by Stress is inversely proportional to percentage remaining of max HP; the lowest percentage Stress can ever reach on Melting without Rhino Skin is 40% increase fire rate on half HP which essentially is a good thing, but that leaves the upper echelons of fire-rate enhancement unattainable.

Sharp Teeth - procs upon taking damage and with Melting's max HP value you don't want to do that.

Melting's design came from "The mix of hundreds of terrible sci-fi books in JW's head." -Rami Ismail

When Melting dies, he can use his special one last time which will explode his own body and every other corpse on screen, releasing a sad and hollow ghost.

Having 1 max health with Melting's second Ultra Mutation and charged Strong Spirit will limit Strong Spirit to save you from death only once. It can't be recharged afterwards.

If you have Crown of Death, Melting's second Ultra Mutation, and charged Strong Spirit, it's possible to play with 1/0 HP, in which case Melting will die in one hit. He will unavoidably die upon entering the next level ending portal. This is essentially a bug, but JW decided to keep it.

Prior to update #48, Melting had a slightly different color palette. It was then changed so he looks "a bit less healthy" and less similar to Steroids. His b-skin and all mutation icons with Melting also got recolored.

In update #65, Melting's special was changed to cause three Blood Explosions on larger corpses/destroyed objects instead of one.